Are freestyle and butterfly times related?

Question

i have noticed that usually good butterflyers are good at freestyle, if i wanted to get better at butterfly, would i also have to get better at freestyle to? i usually do breaststroke but my coach wants me to do more fly to replace a flyer that just graduated, also, would i be able to make all three work (IM would be good if my backstroke wasnt so sucky)

Answer 1

i would say that the only way they are related are that butterflyershave to be very strong and have power to poewr through. this will in turn help all the other strokes, that is what power can help with. freestyle it helps with becuase freestyle is generally considered the "easiest" of all strokes (which i totally disagree with becase i am a backstroker and free is my worst event) to get better at fly i would say make sure ur technique is good.

it depends how old u are but if ur over 14 i would say u should stick to what u can do. ur coach shouldn't try to make u a flyer just to take someone elses place, unless he thinks u have a "natural talent' for fly. if breaststroke is ur best then keep that strong. if want to be an IMer then u gotta work all ur strokes. keep working on ur weakest strokes, that will lead to the biggest improvement.

Answer 2

I don't think they are necessarily related. I'm an all around freestyler with Junior National cuts in the 50-1500 free, but I'm not great at fly. I'm good at the 200 but not the 100. I only started becoming a flier recently and my team churns out a lot of flyers because of all the distance training we do. I think if you work at it, do drills and core strengthening and stuff, you can improve your fly, while improving your free as well. My coach always says that the better you get at the harder events (i.e. distance, 200 fly...) the better your other events will be because they won't seem so hard.

Also, you don't need any natural talent to be good. You don't have to stick with something just because you're good at it. i had no talent starting out swimming and I've improved a ton these past 2 years based on hard work and dedication. So if you want to be good at fly, just practice it. The times aren't necessarily related but I can almost assure you that if you get better at one then the training you did for that will help you with the other and it will improve also. But, you don't HAVE to get better at free to be good at fly.

As for the IM. Being an 400 IMer myself, breastroke being my worst leg by far, you can really excel in that if you bring your fly and free times up to speed. Being a breastroker already gives you an advantage because that leg is a lot of times where races are won and lost. (trust me, I've been through it) And even if your backstroke is bad, with a good fly lead and strong breastroke leg, you can counter a kind of poor backstroke leg.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Well both strokes are similar in a few ways, but totally different in others. Both use their back muscles, but butterfly is a much harder stroke and people who can accomplish this stroke would probably be good at any other stroke.

Answer 4

Yes, you are right. You need to be well-built, have power and stamina to excel in the front crawl/freestyle and butterfly. Both styles need more energy than the breast-stroke.Butterfly times tend to be slightly slower than front crawl and it is the only stroke requiring a lot of strength and stamina, It would help if you have a streamlined body and powerful back muscles and leg strokes.

Answer 5

i dont think they are similar i can swim fly much faster than free its kind of funny how that works